Reno Couple Sentenced to Prison for Filming Stepdaughter
Reno, Nev. – A Reno man was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison and his wife was sentenced to five years in prison after they used a cell phone camera to secretly record the woman's 11-year-old daughter as she changed her clothes, announced Daniel G. Bogden, United States Attorney for the District of Nevada.
Jerry Alan Brown, 46, was sentenced on Wednesday, January 18, 2012. He had pleaded guilty in September to attempted production of child pornography. Rebecca Brown, 37, was sentenced on Tuesday, January 17, 2012. She pleaded guilty in September to attempted receipt of child pornography. Both defendants were sentenced by Senior U.S. District Judge Edward C. Reed, who also ordered them to undergo sex offender treatment and to be placed on lifetime supervised release following their release from prison.
According to the facts contained in the plea negotiation documents, on August 10, 2010, Jerry and Rebecca Brown staged a cell phone video camera in a bedroom in their home and directed Brown's 11-year-old daughter to change her clothes in front of the recorder. The couple intended to videotape sexually explicit images of the girl. The plea documents also indicate that in July 2010, the defendants took similar steps to create an additional videotape containing sexually explicit images of the girl using Jerry Brown's laptop computer.
The investigation was conducted by members of the Internet Crimes Against Children and Innocent Images Task Forces, including the FBI, U.S. ICE Homeland Security Investigations, Nevada Attorney General's Office, Washoe County Sheriff's Office and the Carson City Sheriff's Office. The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Carla Higginbotham.
The case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the U.S. Department of Justice. Led by United States Attorneys' Offices and the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) of the U.S. Department of Justice, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals, who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov.
